our "new" house! *updated*

As of last night, our house is now officially painted!! All windows have been replaced as well. Elijah got that finished up this weekend. (We wanted to get that done before the painters started painting.) We still have work to do (railings, landscaping, deck, etc.), but here's what it looks like so far. I'll try to take some better pics this weekend so the new pics aren't in the shade, but this will work for now:

Front (before)

Front (after)

Back (before)

Back (after)

I'm going to have to create a list of all the things that were wrong with this place when we first got it, but I just wanted to point out right now that a few months ago, Elijah took out about 20+ bushes...in our front yard. And not all were directly up against the house. (You can see some of them in the before pics.) The previous owners should NEVER own a house again.

Very Important Election Info

Regardless of people's political views, this is something that everyone needs to watch and be aware of:

dump truck statement

Saw this written on the back of a dump truck on my way into work this morning:

Going...

to go take a dump.

That had me cracking up! I think all dump trucks should have that on their rear. haha!

fun random pics

Elijah & his ghetto lawn mower (it's better than a push mower, and one of these days we'll get him a good riding one!), mowing the jungle of our yard:

Zoe & her first tree climb:

And the house fixing-up begins again...!

So we have started working on our house again! Over the past few weekends we have covered the old side entrance into the kitchen, the old entrance into the storage "shed", calked, fixed the exterior window frames that were deteriorating, and put in our first new window - the one in the kitchen! We can't wait until the rest of the windows get in! They are beautiful! And are going to do wonders to make this house look better. Here's some pics:

The Shed

(before)

(after)

Side Of The House

(before)

(after)

Germany

And yet again, I'm very far behind on this whole blogging thing!

So work sent me to Germany last month - Hamburg for the first half of the week and Lüdenscheid for the 2nd half (about an hour from Cologne & Düsseldorf). It's a rough job sometimes. ;-) I left June 14th in the afternoon and got to Hamburg around 8:30 Saturday morning (Germany time). And our meeting didn't start until Sunday afternoon, so I had a full day and a half to just tour the city! Four of us got there at the same time, so we went EVERYWHERE. I was able to sleep the entire trip from Newark to Hamburg, so for the most part I was fine. I'm sure if I'd stopped moving for long enough I would have needed a nap, but thankfully that didn't happen. Anyway, we went walking all around the city, and even took a tour of Cap San Diego, and old ship that used to be used to transport people to America. It's now used as a hotel (yes, I'm for real) and people rent it for parties and things like that, in addition to the constant tours that it's open for. The best part of that whole tour is that we ended up joining a private tour, but didn't realize we'd done that until the very end when they told everyone that our food & drinks were waiting for us on the pool deck. We were like "wow, a tour, food, & drinks...all for 6€!". Yeah...the tour guide ended up having to tell us that we weren't invited and that it was a private tour. LOL Thankfully he caught us before we actually ate or drank anything! Later in the afternoon 3 of the 4 of us were still dealing ok with the time change and we continued our tour of the city. We ended up at this old church that you could go to the top of for a wonderful view of the whole city, and we thought it'd be a great idea to walk instead of take the elevator. Yeah...I almost died. But the view was wonderful!


Hamburg is a harbor city, and that on top of the fact that everything is so incredibly old and unique, I just found the whole city to be sooooo beautiful! And of course, I took a bazillion pics, only a very small portion of which are getting posted on here.

All day on Saturday, one of my coworkers had been talking about going to the fish market early Sunday morning, so I told him I'd go. We had to get up super early (we left the hotel at 6am), but hey, just how many times was I going to be in Hamburg? Probably never again! And we were so glad we went! It was an absolute riot. There were booths EVERYWHERE, selling not only fish, but fruit, vegetables, tacky touristy knickknacks, clothing, etc. Pretty much everything you could imagine. And everyone there had either not gone to bed yet (oh yes, the party was still going - they were even still selling beer!) or were tourists. And it was a madhouse! Everything was outside along the harbor, but one building housed food carts, beer, and a band.

Our meeting started Sunday afternoon, and that afternoon we took a boat tour of the harbor. The VP of our company, who's also one of my bosses, hooked me up and got it so that I could stand behind the boat captain for the whole trip. That allowed for MUCH better pics!!

Monday we did a tour of the city that involved a bush ride, walking, bike riding (that was interesting...hahaha), and canoing! And my goodness, that was highly entertaining. The last thing we did was go canoing, and this place that rented out canoes has only had 1 person fall overboard in 4 years...we managed to get 4 people in the water in one afternoon! LOL (No, not me.) It was so funny and of course encouraged people to poke fun at them for the rest of the time we were in Germany.

Tuesday night we went to see the Lion King! That was amazing, even in German. And of course it helps that I've seen the movie quite a few times, as well as the play in English already, so I could at least follow along. But the whole way that play is performed, the costumes, etc. is just amazing! Oh, and we took a boat to get to the show!

Oh, and here's the hotel we were staying at - SIDE hotel:


VERY modern!!

Wednesday our meeting wrapped up in Hamburg, and we all took a train to Lüdenscheid for the remainder of our meeting (our Germany office is located there). That was interesting. They're not really set up for a lot of luggage, so we were blocking entrance ways and everything. Plus, at one point, we had to run from one train to another and had about 2 minutes to go quite a good distance. Now that was tiring!!

We had our Thursday meetings at our office, with dinner at the hotel that us out-of-towners stayed at. And Friday our meeting wrapped up, and we had that night off! So of course, wanting to take in all that I can while I was there, I went into downtown Lüdenscheid to walk around and eat dinner. That worked out well - I was able to buy Germany chocolate and gummy bears! (Apparently gummy bears are from that area, and the bag I bought was much better than anything I've ever eaten in the States!)



And our hotel that we stayed at - The Schloss Hotel. It was drastically different than where we stayed in Hamburg, and while I loved the SIDE Hotel, I'd have to say that The Schloss Hotel was my favorite.

All in all, it was an absolutely wonder trip, but I was ready to get home when I left early Saturday morning. I'd had to say out of all the differences in our countries, this one was the worst - there's hardly any ice available for drinks! ;-)

Pictures to be posted soon of my entire trip on my Picasa page.

Juline Graduated!

Well, if you couldn't tell by the post heading and the pictures, Juline graduated! And since I'm quite a bit behind on blogging, it actually happened a few weeks ago - May 16th to be exact. We had what I've been calling a mini-family reunion in Fairfax, VA/Washington DC - Mom & Dad came down from MA, we went up from NC, and Brent came up from TX. Oh, and one of Juline's closest friends from high school (Larissa) came down with my parents, which was awesome.

So Juline's ceremony was Friday late afternoon, and thankfully the ceremony wasn't too painful! I got a lot of pictures that showed otherwise, though... That night we had a great dinner at Bonefish, followed by an interesting trip to the grocery store. Beverages were needed, and of course Dad had to do a store check! (You can't take him anywhere...hahaha) Saturday we went to DC, and I have to say, out of all the large cities I've been to, at this point, DC is my favorite. And we could not have had a more gorgeous day! We spent about 5.5 hours or so walking around and looking at all the monuments, then headed to Old Alexandria for dinner....and a restaurant was finally picked out about an hour later. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were exhausted!!!

Sunday was moving day - Juline had to be out by noon, or something like that. Then we had a late lunch at Olive Garden (Dad was NOT liking us for that choice, but he was out numbered), and Elijah and I left for home a few hours later. Great weekend! Congrats again Juline!!

BTW - Today is Juline's first day in the official workforce! She's working in the accounting group at Staples Corporate in Framingham...what exactly she'll be doing is not something I'm aware of at this point, though. haha Not sure she's entirely thrilled that she's officially done with college, but I know that Dad is happy! All he talked about that weekend was how she was now on her own. LOL Nice, huh?

Oh, TONS of pics are up here if you want to look: www.picasaweb.google.com/LCFlan